5. Ps. xxiv. 1.
POLITICAL WRITINGS 161 civil laws, not because they bring men to make a good use of their wealth, but because those who make a bad use of it become thereby less injurious. This comes about either because some of them become faithful and fervent—and these have a right to all things—or because those who live among them are not hampered by their evil deeds, but are tested until they come to that City where they are heirs to eternity, where the just alone have a place, the wise alone leadership, and those who are there possess what is truly their own.
what right does every man possess what he possesses? Is it not by human right? For by divine right, "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." ^ The poor and the rich, God made of one clay; the same earth supports aUke the poor and the rich. By human right, however, one says, This estate is mine, this house is mine, this servant is mine. By human right, therefore, is by right of the emperors. Why so? Because God has distributed to mankind these very human rights through the emperors and kings of this world. Do you wish us to read the laws of the emperors, and to act by the estates according to these laws? If you will have your possession by human right, let us recite the laws of the emperors; let us see whether they would have [you] possess anything. But what is the emperor to me? thou sayest. It is by right from him that thou possessest the land. Or take away rights created by emperors, and then who will dare say, That estate is mine, or that slave is mine, or this house is mine? If, however, in order to their possessing these things, men have received rights derived from kings, will ye that we read the d. In Johan. Evang. Tract VI, 25, 26.
5. Ps. xxiv. 1.
162 ST. AUGUSTINE laws, that you may be glad in having even a single garden, and impute it to nothing but the clemency of the dove that you are permitted to remain in possession even there? . . . But what have we to do with the emperor? But
I have already said that we are treating of human right. And yet the apostle would have us obey kings, would have us honour kings, and said, "Honour the king." * Do not say. What have I to do with the king? as in that case, what have you to do with the possession? It is by the rights derived from kings that possessions are enjoyed. Thou hast said, What have I to do with the king? Say not then that the possessions are thine; because it is to those same human rights, by which men enjoy their possessions, thou hast referred them.
C. The Vusr War
am aware that Cicero, in the third book of his De Repuhlica, if I mistake not, argues that a first-rate power will not engage in war except either for honour or for safety. What he has to say about the question of safety, and what he means by safety, he explains in another place, saying, "Private persons frequently evade, by a speedy death, destitution, exile, bonds, the scourge, and the other pains which even the most insensible feel. But to states, death, which seems to emancipate individuals from all punishments, is itself a punishment; for a state should be so constituted as to be eternal. And thus death is not natural to a republic as to a man, to whom death is not only necessary, but often even desirable. But when a
6. 1 Pet. ii. 17.
a. City of God, XXU, 6.
POLITICAL WRITINGS 163
State is destroyed, obliterated, annihilated, it is as if (to compare great things with small) this whole world perished and collapsed." Cicero said this because he, with the Platonists, beUeved that the worid would not perish. It is therefore agreed that, according to Cicero, a state should engage in war for the safety which preserves the state permanently in existence, though its citizens change; as the foUage of an olive or laurel, or any tree of this kind, is perennial, the old leaves being replaced by fresh ones. For death, as he says, is no punishment to individuals, but rather delivers them from all other punishments, but it is a punishment to the state. And therefore it is reasonably asked whether the Saguntines did right when they chose that their whole state should perish rather than that they should break faith with the Roman repubUc; for this deed of theirs is applauded by the citizens of the earthly repubUc. But I do not see how they could follow the advice of Cicero, who tells us that no war is to be undertaken save for safety or for honour; neither does he say which of these two is to be preferred, if a case should occur in which the one could not be preserved without the loss of the other. For manifestly, if the Saguntines chose safety, they must break faith; if they kept faith, they must reject safety; as also it fell out. But the safety of the city of God is such that it can be retained, or rather acquired, by faith and with faith; but if faith be abandoned, no one can attain it.
the natural order which seeks the peace of mankind, ordains that a monarch should have the power of undertaking war if he thinks it advisable, and that the soldiers should perform their b. Contra Faustum, XXII, 75.